


98 and ¾ percent guaranteed

by Saul



Series: Raven!Andrew AU [2]
Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Listen I don't make the rules the heart wants what the heart wants, M/M, Much Pining For Neil, Multi, Raven!Andrew AU, So Much It Might As Well Be Kandreil, and Andrew's heart is never as dead as he wants it to be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-19 05:42:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8192369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saul/pseuds/Saul
Summary: "Evermore is your reality. You are a Raven. You are here."Andrew has the Raven's number four cradled between his hands, thumbs gentle on one scarred and one tattooed cheek, fingertips curled the soft skin under a sharp jaw. He has a life in his hands, and he speaks until he finds its pulse point."Your father is dead. Your mother is dead. Riko is not your master. The Moriyamas do not own you. They are your jailers. In twenty-nine days, the King will graduate."





	

**Author's Note:**

> this was startlingly difficult to write. 
> 
> **major warning** for self-harm, suicide attempts, torture and implied rape. basically everything the series deals with.

This is what Andrew does:

"Evermore is your reality. You are a Raven. You are here."

He has the Raven's number four cradled between his hands, thumbs gentle on one scarred and one tattooed cheek, fingertips curled the soft skin under a sharp jaw. He has a life in his hands, and he speaks until he finds its pulse point.

"Your father is dead. Your mother is dead. Riko is not your master. The Moriyamas do not own you. They are your jailers. In twenty-nine days, the King will graduate."

Some days it takes less than thirty seconds. The mantra is the same every time, edited only to lower the countdown. By itself, it takes fifteen seconds to say. Doubled, thirty. 

"Repeat."

Neil's inhale shakes. His exhale sighs. 

Andrew counts to three aloud, and repeats.

This day, it takes one minute and fifteen seconds for Neil to repeat the words back to him. They don't shake. For that, Andrew gives him a pat on the scarred cheek, withdraws his hands, and praises, "Good."

"Don't you have lackeys to manage?" Neil bites out, his eyes hovering over Andrew's left shoulder.

They aren't lackeys, they aren't minions, they aren't friends, they aren't anything. He is undoubtedly a villain, but a poor one: revenge bores him, loss bores him, success bores him. That is why he can plan this. That is why he does this, and not Neil, not Kevin, not Jean. As much as they argue to the contrary, their hearts continue to beat. 

"And you're one of them," Andrew reminds him, and took the time wherein Neil attempts to meet his eye to rummage through his own emotional state. "I need you here."

The search turns up a flat line. It isn't a surprise or a concern.

Neil's calloused hands flex in his lap. They smooth out thin black cloth and then settle as vices on bruised, sinew and skin knees. Seated on Andrew's bed with Andrew on one knee in front of him, he resembles the Raven's quickest and second best back liner less than ever. The glaring mistake is that he looked human.

In Evermore, to look human is a beautiful sight.

Litany accomplished, the two of them have finished for the day. Now was when Andrew stood, collected Troy, and left Neil to Jean. It wasn't always that easy - today is a good day for Riko, and subsequently, for the rest of them. They should take advantage of that. They shouldn't loiter in a dorm room, wasting time trying to fix a leaky faucet when the house was on fire.

"What's on your mind, pretty bird?"

Neil's nose crinkles. "Don't be disgusting."

"I'll be as I please, Neil Josten," he says, if only to get Neil's sharp look.

Their eyes meet without Neil even seeming to realize what he'd done. Andrew has to forcibly stop himself from reaching out to tell him _good, you're doing good_ , as it would not work in the slightest with Neil Josten.

By the Raven's roister, number four of the starting line belonged to Nathaniel Wesninski. By quiet confession on the first night Andrew had pried the mantra from a beaten and bowed teenager, Neil Josten was his preferred title. It hurt no one but Riko to call him that, and it was something of a game on Andrew's part to see how long he could use it without Riko catching on. So far, it had been two years.

"You're an idiot," Neil tells him. “You’re set for the future more than any of us.”

"Old news," he replies, the smile on his face an afternote. "Next."

"Why are you doing this?"

"Ouch, two strikes. Careful with the next, or you'll be out."

"I know you have a brother."

Ah.

Andrew cocks his head, his blood pounding in his ears.  


. . .

  
What Andrew saw was this:

Kevin Day returning to his place by Riko’s side. His throne was smaller, less decorated, but a throne nevertheless. Kevin’s collar was not around his neck; rather, it perched atop his head, sparkling and golden, heavy with expectation and perfection. It did not match Riko’s, it was not as impressive as Riko’s, and it would never. Now he played with his right hand, not his left, and only half as well as the average Raven sophomore. By the grace of his adopted father Tetsuji Moriyama alone did he play at all. 

Kevin knew that well. 

“The Nest is different,” he muttered to Andrew after a week of _being home,_ the cup in his hand filled with Trayvon’s speciality wop. “The atmosphere. This party. It’s different.”

When asked what made the wop special, Trayvon promised it would knock a grown elephant on its ass faster than any stupid tranquilizer. Francis took one sip and told him he should look into becoming a zookeeper. Although Kevin used to enjoy much higher quality alcohol, something about its cheapness must have been comforting after Palmetto.

Or, more likely: after a week of sober, mandated adjustment, consistent meetings with his adopted father Tetsuji Moriyama, and Raven brand training, he wanted to forget what he’d done. 

Andrew was not so kind as to play along. “You’ve been gone. Things change.”

Francis attempted a backflip from the lobby’s couch. He jumped, yelped, and landed flat on his back. In response, his audience crowed with laughter.

Riko was with Jean and Neil. Andrew kept track of the time from the clock on the wall, his hands free of any drink.

Kevin’s green eyes were a deep emerald, and grew darker still as he put himself between Andrew and the time, a finger jabbing accusingly into Andrew’s chest. It was, Andrew noticed, his left.

“You’ve caused it.”

“You’ve been gone,” Andrew emphasized, his smile a warning. “Things change.”

“If I notice on my first week here, do you honestly think Riko won’t? He’ll ruin you.”

“I’m shaking in my boots.”

“Andrew,” Kevin hissed. “I just got back on track. I won’t falter again. Don’t go out of your way to fuck up our chance.”

“We had a deal.”

“Have. We have a deal. I haven’t forgotten.”

Andrew’s smile grew. “Doubtful. You’ve been gone.”

Kevin growled and put his height to use. He looked furious, he looked scared, he looked like the Kevin Day Andrew remembered from before their first game as proper Ravens.

(They had a deal from Andrew’s time in juvie; it, along with Andrew’s childhood in the foster system, felt as far away as it ever would.)

“Hey,” Shelby snapped from across the room. Laughter died, heads turned. A pin could drop and make a ripple loud as an earthquake. “Do you have a problem, princess? Back it up. He obviously doesn’t want you in his space.”

Startled, Kevin looked at her as if she’d sprouted two heads.

Andrew took the opportunity to jab his own finger into Kevin’s chest and push him back. It took hardly any effort - in the Nest, Kevin was royalty. For all else that was true, his arrogance was written into his genes. It wasn’t, in Andrew’s opinion, his worst quality, though it certainly made him easy to spook.

Evermore’s insistence on breaking down the individual had worked in Andrew’s favor. Shelby, and all eight of the freshmen around her, thought him the center of their world. In return, he would protect them. It was a simple give and take, a concept which Kevin seemed to at last take for granted after six years.

But expiration dates weren’t Andrew’s problem.

“In a way, you delivered.” Kevin turned back to him as he spoke. Good. “After you left, I found my fun. Thank you for that, Kevin. Really.”

By the look on Kevin’s face, his drunken little mind worked itself into a frenzy to comprehend what he was hearing. This was a turning point. A precipice. A fork in the road. Either Kevin would tell or he wouldn’t. Either he would stand with or against Andrew. As Kevin had been the one to run away to the Foxes, to the one university Andrew _would not_ tolerate him bringing Riko’s attention to, what Kevin chose to do was not his concern. Either way, Andrew would persevere. 

Kevin said, voice somewhat choked, “You owe me your game.”

“Do I? Unlike some of us, I’m still here.”

“I came back.” His voice didn’t even shake. He regrouped fast, Andrew would give him that.

“That wasn’t hard to predict,” Andrew drawled, sitting back into his armchair and leaving Kevin to stand alone in the circle of watchful Ravens. “They have you whipped. Out of the King’s court, he’s made you into a jester.”

Kevin didn’t have a response for that beyond the anger curled in the tightened corners of his mouth.

That was good.

“Talk to me when you’ve decided what you’d like to do,” Andrew told him. “Just because you’re here doesn’t mean he’s won.”

It wasn’t mercy or sympathy, and Kevin didn’t take it as such, though Andrew was sure the freshmen did. 

That was good, too. 

Andrew refocused his gaze on the clock. Thirty-seven minutes after he had disappeared, Riko reappeared, collected Kevin, looked over Andrew and the freshmen, and left. 

Tempting as it was, Andrew did not call after the King that he’d missed a smudge of red on his hands. Kevin surely noticed. That was good enough.  


. . .

  
“Kevin told me,” Neil says in a rush. He appears nervous. His foot wouldn’t stop jumping. “I knew I recognized your face. An identical twin. Of course I recognized your face.”

“Kevin is a useless gossip.”

Neil’s mouth quirks up, all mockery turned toward himself. “No. He’s just awful with small talk.”

Andrew reaches for Neil’s knee and pressed it still. It put his hand over Neil’s and his fingers on red, raw wrists, the skin hot and angry to touch.

He says, as if Neil hadn’t stilled in anticipation of pain, “Around here, that’s nothing new.”

After a beat, Neil finds his voice again. “Around here, nothing’s new.”

That isn’t true.

Andrew says, “You know something new. What are you going to do about it?”

Neil says nothing.

Andrew smirks. “What a sorry bastard. If I had any, I’d offer you a smoke.”

A very, very small part of Andrew wants to ask what Aaron was like. Luther, his uncle, had been due to visit within a week of Kevin and Riko’s, but as things happened, he had never met his brother in person. The small part in the back of his mind begs: _what does he like? How is he? Do we match in more than looks? I hope not._

He’d watched the Foxes’ games as every other Raven did, to see an example of what not to do. The team hadn’t many interviews even on the introduction of an ex-Raven on their line and, after December, their disqualification from the spring championship. Of those that existed, Minyard had never been a target.

Despite his relation to the backliner, Riko had yet to make Aaron a target. Once upon a time as an arrogant, trapped little boy found his taste for cruelty and embraced it wholeheartedly, Andrew had promised himself he would not let Riko make Aaron a target. The problem in person was that talking about him without derision went against that promise. Andrew had long lost hold of the emotion that had spurred the promise into being, but it was the longest lasting he had. Out of his own stubbornness, he would not break it. 

“He was an asshole,” Neil says in the here and now. “Always out to prove how little he cared.”

Andrew blinks.

“But he had this girlfriend, a Vixen named Katelyn, and he’d turned into putty around her. She was alright. Who knows if they lasted, but I think they could’ve.”

Andrew didn’t care about the girlfriend. 

“Aaron, though…” Words trailing off in thought, Neil’s hand twitches under Andrew’s. Andrew, on reflex, steadies it, and once again watches Neil freeze. Voice tight, defensive, Neil continues. “He and his mom were close. She called practically every week. It always left him in a weird mood, but he never missed it.”

_Why?_

Andrew opens his mouth, digs his nails into the leftover imprints of handcuffs, and jeers, “Do you have a point, or do you just like being alone with me?”

Neil flinches, or rather, worse, _doesn’t_ , his muscles locking up and eyes wary beyond measure on Andrew’s hands. A habit leftover from two forty-five minute sessions with Dylan, Thomas and Tanner, the same trio Riko had used with Jean. It isn’t a trick that works on his aggressors, but it works too well on Andrew. It reminds him of what he treads the line of being, and it is exactly what he intended to inspire.

It feels like slime in his teeth, slipping under his tongue and sliding down his throat. It makes his skin crawl, to threaten what he would never do. It is what needs to be done.

He stands. After Andrew takes a step back and distance returns between them, Neil stands as well.

“I don’t care about Aaron Minyard,” he drawls, dismissive by choice. Blood still rushes past his ears. He feels light, he feels dangerous. He hates Neil, he needs Neil, his scars and his bruises and his blood and his words. “You’d do well to remember that.”

Neil watches him from below his lashes, head tilted away and mouth thinned. 

He’s smart even after the Ravens stripped him of his autonomy, put his brain in a blender and mashed up everything he had held dear. He probably didn’t believe Andrew.

It makes Andrew taste anger and wind, cold and biting and refreshing. It makes him want to goad the bird to sing. It makes him feel a bit like a monster, but that’s the easiest part of any of this.

“Until tomorrow,” he promises, turning for the door. “No one to convince today.” 

The others would sigh and slump and scratch their necks at those words, their eyes down and mouths quirked into nervous squiggles. Andrew has a reputation to maintain for Riko and his uncle and now-but-not-always few of whom opposed him. They all understood the necessity, but no one enjoyed pain.

He promises only what he delivers: control, stability, and a collar in a different color. 

Neil never shied from any part of Andrew’s protection. As time within the Nest wore on, he would learned to abide, but he had never been broken. 

He follows Andrew now, easy and quiet but not locked away, not fearful like the others. He did not think Riko alone (whether in service to or in obsession of) as the reason Andrew kept his violence on a tight leash.

For that, Andrew _hates_ him.  


. . .

  
The truth is:

Riko hadn't watched his sessions for years, but appearances were important in the nest.

Once upon a time while Kevin was away for his mandatory state testing, Riko had tied (younger, wilder, naive) Jean to a bed and handed Andrew a knife. Riko’s handiwork mapped itself in silvery lines, raised blotches, and a look of determined terror; Andrew added a crude smiley face and the wobbly words, _better luck next time._

Backwards, of course. Mirror ready.

Admiring the work, a twitching mess of red on gleaming sheets, Riko whistled. “And here I thought you were no fun.”

What Riko did held no flame to those who came before him. What Andrew could do on his leave was, apparently, not something Riko had before considered, and learned quickly to enjoy.

He was Riko’s first enforcer, first tool for violence, first _lackey._ He was a kept man, bound by paperwork and legalities and glimpses of a criminal empire, none of which meant a thing to Andrew.

The difference between him and those to follow was that as long as the result was to Riko’s satisfaction, he could stray from the instructions to his heart’s content. 

The difference was that Riko thought he knew Andrew. The difference was that Andrew knew Riko.

(And thus Francis boasted his fair share of scrapes and bruises. And thus Shelby’s nose was jagged in the middle from an unset break. And thus the knives under Andrew’s armbands did not dry for long.)

( _You’re just like him,_ Neil had once accused him, his back bleeding and chest heaving and knees shaking. Like that, he resembled a young Jean quite a bit. They made a fine pair.)

( _I have limits,_ he pointed out, as he had to all those entering his circle. _Riko doesn’t._ )

( _They’re arbitrary._ )

( _You live in the Nest,_ Andrew murmured, and Neil flinched. _Every reason is arbitrary._ )

After the door had shut on Riko’s form, Andrew had reminded a shaking and angered Jean that at the depth he’d cut, _at worst_ the wounds would scar.

Jean had snapped back his lack of appreciation for the consideration. Andrew remembered the tone well, though not the exact words: it had been the first time Jean had turned his hatred for Riko toward Andrew, and a fine snapshot of what Jean had been. Even if he had a choice in what he remembered, the scene would have stuck with him for something not entirely unlike nostalgia.

He hated the feeling, but hate didn’t make it go away.

As it came to be, Riko took to the spotlight and left Andrew to maintain his order. And so, he would be lying if he said he didn’t thrive in the Nest.

Here was why: when Riko said _don’t touch_ , Ravens listened. As a child who had pled with numerous variations - _stop, please, no, don’t do this to me_ -, Andrew admired what Riko accomplished.

There were other ways to keep people back, he was sure. It was just, he’d never found one as efficient and thorough as Raven-brand violence.

Riko was a connoisseur of cruelty. In comparison, Andrew was a beast, a label which convinced Riko that he held no interest beyond blood and broken bone in their games of brutality. As any good monster, the advantage was all Andrew cared to consider.

After the second session with Riko’s barely leashed rapists, Neil had bowed his head and taken Andrew’s deal. 

That was the beginning. Not the locker room, not Neil’s Christmas visit, not the signed contract that made the tattoo on his cheek match his jersey. Andrew had waited until Riko approached Dylan for a third session, smiled the smile Riko adored for its similarities to his own, and asked to be Neil’s exclusive caretaker.

Dylan hadn’t argued. Andrew hadn’t expected him to; the three still wouldn’t look him in the eye. It was as was proper.

“I don’t do shows,” he had reminded Riko. He knew what Riko liked - control and a front row view -, and what Riko didn’t - Neil Josten -, and wondered if this might be the line. He wondered if he would take the opportunity to end it now, to wrap his hands around Riko’s throat and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze until his head popped off like a dandelion. It would be efficient. It would be what he would do, if he only had himself to think about.

Though Andrew drew a line, Riko waltzed over it.

“Your work is an art, Day. I’ll enjoy it even after it’s released to the public.”

Riko thought equality funny, as anyone else might look at a horse with a paper cone taped to its head and find the label unicorn to be amusing, wishful thinking.

Imagination running coppery and red with the blood of the King, Andrew obliged him with a laugh.  


. . .

  
The Ravens were irrevocably the best after Neil and Kevin’s reintegration into the team. It took a full summer to iron out Neil bucking Captain Moriyama’s instructions and Kevin’s faltering aim with his non-dominant hand, but in true Raven fashion, they persevered.

Kevin, at least, was properly motivated. His desperation to prove he could be worthwhile on the court seemed to rub off on Neil; eventually, the two moved together half as well as Kevin moved with Riko, which was half better than anyone else had managed. 

Jean displayed marked improvement on and off the court, even as his partner landed him in hot water again and again. He did well with a partner that Riko respected the skill of, even if that partner was a mouthy little shit for the first few months.

Neil had the least choice. By spring, his father put him on the chopping block. No one except Tetsuji Moriyama, Nathan Wesninski and Nathaniel Wesninski were in the room where the deal was struck, but from Nathaniel’s change of tune toward Riko Moriyama from overt dislike to quiet protest, his father had made his terms clear. 

The pulpy mess his right cheek had become supported the idea. Neil never breathed a word of what his father had done, but through simple experience with wounds meant to hurt, Andrew recognized a branding iron’s mark. Beyond that, what laid under Neil’s shirt had always been a mess, but the map of knife wounds had grown worse. When Jean saw them in the locker room, he’d quietly murmured that Neil was lucky every wound was superficial with a look toward Kevin that Kevin ignored. Riko hadn’t ignored or missed it, however; voice cold, he’d agreed Neil was lucky, and then asked if Jean would like to match Neil. 

Jean hadn’t said yes, but Riko had already made up his mind. If Andrew remembered correctly (and he always did), Francis skipped showering in the locker room for the week to follow as he hadn’t been able to take the sight.

The wounds didn’t interfere with Neil’s or Jean’s playing. They didn’t matter.

In the year to follow, the Ravens took the championships by an unprecedented landslide. 

Palmetto State, as Riko was happy to inform the team, had been pressured to drop from the Class I competitions. Apparently, being Class II lowered their scholarship opportunities for their players. While those already under financial aid remained so, their recruitment for the next year numbered two. The Foxes were unlikely to qualify for any competition by the fifth year girls’ graduation. Really, it was only by their coach’s stubborn idiocy that the school kept an Exy team at all.

Andrew kept an eye on how the Foxes performed that final year all the same. Aaron Minyard continued his attendance; alongside his cousin, Nicky Hemmick, they took second in the national championships. The handful of online articles featuring their team showed a happy celebration in the middle of the court, the eleven Foxes jumping for joy over their measly silver. 

They would never see gold. They would never taste success.

Andrew wondered how much Aaron matched him on in the inside. If Aaron even cared.

He probably did, Andrew decided after a moment of thought. Andrew was the broken one. Aaron was by all accounts happy enough with his lot in life ( _sans twin_ ).  


. . .

  
This is what Andrew waits for:

Riko and Kevin both receive their professional draft letters three months before graduation. As the Olympics are right around the corner, recruiters appear to talk seriously about consideration for their inclusion into the US Court. By their record, Riko was a shoe-in while Kevin was probationary until the audition.

Riko accepts with a winning smile, satisfaction within reach.

Kevin accepts with a quieter, surer pride. In the audition he will shine if only he can remember how to move without looking over his shoulder for Riko’s approval. Palmetto is a bad memory with an awful aftertaste, and he does all he can to bury it. He had spent the better part of his junior year convincing Riko he wouldn’t run again. That would be a hard thing to forget, but Kevin had always been remarkably single-minded.

In twenty-nine days, graduation would at last arrive for Exy’s darlings. 

Andrew can hardly wait.  


. . . 

  
This is what Andrew hears:

The hitch in Kevin’s breath when a player is too rough with Neil on the court, as if he wants to snap for them to take their hands off number four. The sharp words he has about unity and form afterward, and the disgust he has for those who crossed the line with one teammate in particular.

He does not offer the same words for three, five or six. 

One notices. One, on the night and day to follow, demonstrates on Neil and Jean precisely what Kevin had lectured against.

(Two, of course, does nothing.)

Every meal period, Kevin sits next to Neil and runs through plays. Once or twice, he ventures into discussing classwork: how Neil’s mandatory science elective was, how his Japanese major was coming along. Riko, on Kevin’s other side, speaks over Neil’s answers; neither Kevin nor Neil do anything about it, as he is their better, and in one way or another, they have accepted it.

(Neil’s silence, hateful and disgusted, says _for now,_ even as Jean’s says _this is all there is for us._ Neil’s interests Andrew. It’s different.)

Kevin fumbles with his friendships. He is obvious, and blatant, and not a little pathetic. This, Andrew hadn’t known, as Kevin had never before attempted a friendship.

Neil, by the comments in French made to Jean but not to Kevin, by the silence and stillness he gives Riko’s second, does not notice.

That’s fair. Kevin possesses the subtlety of a mac truck while Neil is the oblivious driver that rams into the broadside of a barn.

And that’s why the responsibility of action falls to Andrew.

As he has nothing else he can think to want, it suits him fine.  


. . .

  
This is what Andrew knows:

In the very beginning of Andrew Day’s creation, Riko saw the bruises he left on those who crossed him, the thoroughness in which he shut down an Exy opponent from reaching what they wanted most, and wanted him as his own. When Andrew had been fourteen and Riko fifteen, he had thought Andrew’s apathy boring but his self-control fascinating. When Kevin insisted on one-on-one visits in the juvenile ward to convince Andrew to sign on, Riko had been taken by his adopted brother’s interest. 

At the time, beyond his potential, Kevin and Jean, Riko had very little of his own. He had the Moriyama name on loan, and his family’s fortune by strict conditional. He had no recognition for who he was, only what he could do. Understandably as he learned of the multitudes of people beyond his family’s mansion and circles, he grew a complex about what he truly held control over.

That was one of Riko’s largest weaknesses, but not, Andrew thought, his worst quality. It made him easy to spook.

As they grew and they entered Edgar Alan, Riko _good_ but not _better_ than fifth year seniors with their experience and developed physique, he wanted an enforcer. He wanted power. He wanted to make a name for himself. He wanted control.

Andrew could understand that.

Jean, skittish as a colt and beaten as a dog underneath his cold criticisms and relentless practice, did not suit the role. Andrew Day, dismissive of his punishments and skin thicker than stone, fit perfectly.

Signing on with the Moriyama family had handed him the freedom to be nothing but a body. Exy was all the Ravens cared about, and though Andrew wouldn’t say he cared about who walked away the victory, he reveled in the simplicity of the court. Cass had been expectation and, in retrospect, a doomed prospect. Her Andrew had wanted validation, had wanted comfort and encouragement and people to see him for more than a body taking up space. That Andrew had wanted to be more than what he was.

Andrew Day, future goalkeeper for the Ravens, didn’t need those things. Kevin was insistent upon his worth, but he was easy to please as long as Andrew kept a racquet in his hand. He did not need to be more, not in any way that was truly a struggle. At the end of the day, he had his thoughts and no one but a scoreboard to impress. 

Kevin warned him of a need for a public image, but he disagreed. His reputation as a silent and bullish rags-to-riches orphan pulled in enough interest. 

As time went on and the court did not bring the validation Riko wanted, he turned to those he owned for relief.

He had _accidentally_ left Jean locked in a storage closet at the local gymnasium, to be found a full thirteen hours later by a janitor. His uncle did not comment. Kevin had admonished Jean for getting lost in a place they frequented every day.

He turned the temperature too high in Andrew and Jean’s rooms during the night, and locked them from access in turning it down. No one commented.

He lashed out and purpled Andrew’s eye for letting Kevin’s shot through the goal.

Andrew, aware of Kevin’s eyes and Riko’s place in their little hierarchy, had taken the punch and laughed.

Riko had brought rope and a belt after Andrew had refused to run practice.

Through pain on his back, he’d realized what a sad boy stood at the top of their ladder, and laughed.

Once, in the first month of Andrew’s freshmen year, Riko had oh-so-kindly introduced him to Dylan, Thomas, Jackson and Kyle.

After, the Ravens had needed a new sub striker. Last Andrew had heard, the doctors had to amputate Kyle’s leg from the knee down. It was a pity for a budding new athlete, it really was. The other three refused to be in a room alone with him after that, though Riko admitted it was Kyle’s fault for turning his back on Andrew without testing the cuffs. 

Andrew agreed: it was their fault.

Once, Riko had laid hands on Andrew’s mandated partner, the boy’s eyes wide and chest heaving in blurry confusion, and Andrew had asked, “Are you so bored? I can do that myself.”

Riko had put the blade in his hand. 

After, he called Andrew to _help_ him with Jean. Again, and again, and again, he was told to _hold his arms, cut his palms, break his finger._

What came of Jean wasn’t Andrew’s concern. As long as he could play, he was fine.

But then Kevin had left, and Riko fell further, and what balance there was cracked and splintered, and if you wanted something done, you had to do it yourself. 

He would not stand Riko looking into Palmetto, and so he had confronted Neil Josten. As planned, Kevin returned. Not as planned, Andrew looked back on the freshmen who looked to him like an unreachable ideal, and he looked forward to a future without any expectations beyond his own, and he thought, _why not?_

Inertia carried him forward. 

After the second session with Dylan, Thomas and Tanner, Neil had opened his ears to what Andrew had been saying and finally, finally fallen into place. There was something in Andrew that felt disappointed by that, but he couldn’t imagine why. 

In any case: Dylan, Thomas and Tanner no longer looked at anyone. First, Andrew made it clear that they knew who was watching. Second, he informed Tetsuji of the trio abusing steroids for their performance, and they had been quietly and efficiently expelled from Edgar Alan without the ever media catching wind.

It felt good. It felt like control. When he said _don’t touch,_ people listened.

For the first time in too long, Andrew had wanted more.  


. . .

  
Thea had left Kevin when he returned to the Nest on a cold day of March after the Ravens trounced the Trojans for the Spring championship and Kevin, on the heels of another Edgar Alan victory, publicized his intent to return to his home team.

Andrew knew Thea had left Kevin because Kevin came to him in his black suit and red tie, Riko left behind for _just one more question, Mr. Moriyama! about Kevin, is it true--_ , crowded him against a wall, and demanded, “What do you know?”

Possessing a fair knowledge of many non-sport related things despite his abrupt indoctrination into the Nest, Andrew hmmed and hawed and tapped his finger on Kevin’s chin. “That red really isn’t your color. That your hair needs a trim. And, most importantly, that you shouldn’t have ran.”

Andrew knew Kevin had left Riko behind and barely thought about it. That wasn’t something he would have done a year previous. Jean and Neil were still waiting in the stands; Jean, at least, would have noticed. 

He also knew Kevin had thought of Thea as more than a rose-colored fling, which wasn’t something Jean or Neil or Riko or anyone else, including Kevin, truly understood.

In front of him, Kevin curled his fists, clenched his jaw, and took a deep, whistling breath through his nose. 

After a terse moment wherein neither expected him to say anything but the situation called for a confession, Kevin blew out the air he’d pulled in and, just like that, deflated.

“I need alcohol.”

“Don’t we all,” Andrew agreed, instructed Troy to stay, and led him out of the convention center for the nearest bar.

As the nights before this one, Thea was not a name that passed Kevin’s lips. For the best, that - in the midst of an abrupt trip to the bar’s dingy bathroom, Kevin’s lips aimed for Andrew’s, hit Andrew’s nose, and then, Andrew’s hand guiding his chin, met his mouth. When Andrew stepped them both back into the stall and pressed Kevin to the door, he did not protest.

Thea would not approve of Kevin rebounding with Riko’s personal attack dog. It didn’t matter. Andrew hadn’t liked her, anyway. She never had any idea of what she was dealing with in terms of stealing Kevin’s time from Riko Moriyama. She had been _distracting._ Kevin, in turn, had thought the Nest a brighter place. 

“Are you hoping someone will hear? That someone will finally know who the great Kevin Day has his sights on? Hold the press, it’s his adopted _cousin?_ Say it isn’t so!”

The thought amused him, so far from familial did he feel. It didn’t amuse Kevin - to change topics, he tried to stick his tongue down Andrew’s throat. It was as attractive as swallowing a slug, and Andrew wasted no time in curling a loving hand in Kevin’s too-long hair and yanking him away. He pulls by the handful, strands caught between fingers, nails scraping scalp.

Kevin hissed, one glassy eye watering and the other squeezed shut. Andrew had wanted to be alone with Kevin since the day Riko’s racquet broke his hand and his naivety; now that he had it, he intended to savor it.

“Oh, the scandal,” Andrew simpered, his mouth a breath from Kevin’s. He flexed his grip in Kevin’s hair, kept him bent low enough to reach. A metaphor for their sophomore to senior years, really. “But they’ll be so disappointed when it’s not the incest they expected. Maybe I’ll change my last name to Moriyama. Give those tabloid sales a,” free hand traveling south to cup the most interested party between them, “ _boost_.”

Kevin snapped for him to _stop_ and, in direct contradiction, fumbled for his shirt’s top button.

Andrew bit his bottom lip. Hard.

“I touch,” Andrew spelled out for him while he cursed and spat bright blood onto the tile. “You hold still. Come now, Kevin. Everyone knows that.”

The Kevin of yesteryear would have thrown a full-blown tantrum. The Kevin of the winter formal, fearful and cracked though he was, would have tucked his tail and retreated. The Kevin here, in a dingy, yellow-lit bathroom stall of a noisy, crowded bar, a chip on his shoulder and the look of a man who tasted freedom and found himself starving, reeling from his loss and his return, lifted his head and snarled, “I won’t have you biting me again, Andrew.”

“So vanilla, so boring,” he chided, and leaned up on his tippy-toes to taste blood.  


. . .

  
It is as Kevin deserves. For finding Andrew in juvie. For cajoling him into practice. For mitigating Tetsuji’s useless worries.

Most of all, for before the night Kevin proved he could stand above their King, Andrew had never thought Riko infallible, but neither had he thought an alternative preferable.

He had inspired Andrew to not only want, but need.

The air between them stretches desperate and dirty, rubs exposed skin rough and brings to light everything Kevin had not been before Riko broke him. Here, as in the Nest, he’s jagged and twisted and cracked, his knees threatening to give out from under him. He looks to Andrew as if he has an answer, as if he might _be_ the answer.

(It is not so dissimilar from their first serious conversation of Andrew Doe becoming Andrew Day, future goalkeeper for the well-decorated Edgar Alan Ravens.)

Andrew holds him up, and takes him apart, and reminds himself: _just this once._  


. . .

  
Later, before they were found but after Andrew’s phone had buzzed thrice and Kevin’s once, Kevin’s pants around his ankles and Andrew’s knees on the floor, “She left you because you gave up.”

It was, perhaps, a savage thing to say to a man coming down from an orgasm, but it was also honest. He fancied he’d like to be honest more often. It always hurt more than a lie.

(If he were honest, he wouldn’t mind putting Kevin’s hand in _his_ pants. At the same time, the thought of another touching him made his stomach heave.)

(See? More painful.)

“I should have never left,” Kevin mumbled, his eyes glassy and his body loose. His palm had a series of red marks from the various customers that ventured through the bathroom and Andrew’s petulant denial to make their meeting a _done deal._ Andrew would maintain Kevin’s whiskey dick had been the primary cause of that second issue, but only if asked.

Kevin had always been a natural at self-flagellation. It was only out of respect for the whoozy quality in his voice that Andrew didn’t put nails into soft skin.

Andrew skims his hands down Kevin’s legs and curls his fingers into the thin-skinned hollows behind his knees. It makes Kevin’s left leg jump and his eyes open wider, almost curious in his warm haze. Apparently he’s ticklish, which Andrew didn’t know, and even while drunk, which was impressive. 

The fact sends warmth somewhere other than Andrew’s dick. Thoroughly disgusted, he rises to his feet and drops back onto the toilet.

“This place smells,” Kevin slurs after watching the sudden movement with increasingly unfocused eyes, takes a pause, processes twice for the right combination, and finally condemns, “like shit.”

Andrew looks around as if he has just realized where they were, and couldn’t possibly believe it.

“Wow,” he marvels, “you sure have a keen eye, Kevin.”

“Shut up,” Kevin orders, swallows wrong, chokes, and coughs until he’s red in the face and sure he may be sick.

Andrew helps him with his pants and shirt and jacket and tie, straightening and tugging and dusting off very real smudges. At the end and only at the end does he take Kevin’s scarred left hand and spread the fingers out under the bathroom’s dim light to trace silvery lines and broken dreams. He receives a wordless snarl for his troubles, Kevin snatching back his hand and clutching it to his chest in an overt display of discomfort. _That_ is how Andrew knows Kevin’s memory will be spotty in the morning.

“Shh,” Andrew says, calm and collected and not near as aroused as he had been. “There, there. You’re back on your feet now.”

“Shut up,” Kevin hisses, vehement in his own drunken way. It sounds more concerned than the first; Andrew gives him the space to lick his not-so-metaphorical wounds.

They time it so Riko’s second call to Kevin’s phone arrives after Kevin is presentable. By the time Moriyama, Troy, Jean, Neil, and his more obsessive fans walk through the door, Andrew has wrangled a piss-drunk girl to hang on Kevin’s arm as if she had been the one to give him the livid bruise on his lip (and, hidden under a rumpled white shirt, his shoulder).

To see how Kevin’s eyes follow Neil takes nothing more than a pair of functioning eyes.

“That isn’t going to end well,” he quips to Jean, because if anyone is always willing to entertain his cheery doom and gloom, it was Moreau.

Jean, however, does not take the bait. He asks, stiff in body and voice (ah, yes; he had allowed two points past his defense during the Trojan game; Andrew had stopped them before they scored, but everyone saw his failure, including Riko; arriving home would not end well for Jean Moreau), “What isn’t?”

Andrew hums, reconsiders, and says, “The King with a royal hangover.”

(See? Much less painful.)

He sees how Kevin watches Neil. 

As he had once taken time to look through Kevin’s eyes at himself and Exy, he took the same time to look at Neil. 

If he realizes then that he’s watched all this time, then it was a realization just _in time._  


. . .

  
The truth hurt.

Glad for the familiar change for the worse, he bathed himself in it.  


. . .

  
Kevin had so long held himself to an impossible standard that Palmetto was more of a wake-up call than Riko breaking his left hand: it had given him a moment, a taste, a breath of success beyond the Nest. It hadn’t worked, no, but it had been roughly a year outside the Moriyamas’ circle. Though ultimately a failed experiment with independence, Kevin had returned with _ideas._

He thought himself over it. He’d convinced himself, Riko, Tetsuji, the Ravens and the world that he had left the Foxes and not looked back.

Andrew knew better. He was trained to find weakness. The Kevin that returned from Palmetto stank of failure, but also of renewed curiousity for _what he could be._

Oh, he could be so much. He was born to be more than Riko’s second.

Surprisingly, the night in the bar wasn’t the last. Equipped varying levels of sobriety, Kevin sought him out and pulled him to out-of-the-way nooks and crannies that Andrew was sure Kevin had frequented with Thea. Ignoring Day had never been an option during Andrew’s time in the Nest, but for the first time, the point of Kevin seeking him out was not Exy.

Instead, it was silence. It was Kevin huffing but bending under Andrew’s precise orders, it was Andrew complaining about how Kevin’s breath smelled, it was Kevin learning to see Andrew as not only the best pick from a litter of juvenile delinquents. 

Every meeting after Kevin had turned to putty in Andrew’s hands, pliant and warm and momentarily sated, Andrew took his broken hand and turned it this way and that. He poked and prodded at the misaligned bone, pulled the stiff fingers until they wouldn’t bend, rolled the wrist with all the care of Kevin’s physical therapist.

It took an age and a half for Kevin to let him touch for more than two seconds, but bit by bit, Kevin learned tolerance. Soon to follow, he learned acceptance. 

“You look better broken.” Andrew meant the difference Palmetto had given him, the chip in his perfectionism that he would never be able to fill. 

Kevin did not agree on any point. He thought he wanted what the Moriyamas offered. He thought his hand a weakness.

It was. Just not in the way he thought.

In any case, Kevin avoided him off the court for the week to follow that little comment.

But when he came back, tipsy off scotch and eyes begging for an answer, he watched Andrew look over his broken hand and looked like he was trying to see what Andrew saw. 

That was good: not only did it mean Kevin would survive, but the hand and all it represented was the King’s biggest weapon. Andrew would disarm it piece by piece until his final breath.  


. . .

  
The Nest ran on sixteen hour days. Fact.

Riko left Neil with Andrew every sixty-fourth hour and before every game. Fact.

Every time, Jean waited a step outside the door until it was time to collect Neil. Fact.

He used to say they took too long. Now, he says nothing.

Andrew feels it in the air: Jean is weathered, withered, an old and broken hound waiting to be taken out back. Jean when Andrew had met him had hope and dreams aplenty, a sharp boy with a sharp mind and eagerness to learn. But as the months dragged on, his fire dimmed. He hadn’t grasped when was best to fight; his family had taught him abandonment, but not abuse; now, after years of both, he had no fight left in him.

Save the fight Neil inspired.

After his father’s visit, Neil in front of Riko is silent in wait. Neil listening to Andrew is silent in assessment. Neil next to Jean is a whipcrack, a fierce spark glowing defiant in a downpour. He pushes Jean along, insults him in flippant French and smiles at Jean’s dry comebacks. 

The two took to each other better than Andrew could have predicted. But then, he had never made an effort to understand Jean: the boy held too many ideas about fair play and optimism, raging against the injustice of his chains. The man bordered broken, his will cracked and determination non-existent, every decision he made an effort to avoid punishment and notice. The Moriyama’s collar so tight around his neck that where the Raven’s best backliner began could not be separated from where Jean Moreau ended. 

Andrew was sure Jean had forgotten what success was like before Neil came along. 

Andrew was not convinced Neil had completely re-educated him.

“If you’re going to help me,” Neil had once begged Andrew, though his terse, tight tone begged for Andrew not to notice his desperation, “help Jean.”

Andrew hmmed and hawed, fingers tapping on his chin. He sang, decision long made, “In the fairytale where he finds a hero, he’ll have to come to me first.”

“He doesn’t know how to,” Neil fought for this word, Neil won this word without knowing what it meant, “ _want_. It’s not his fault.”

“It’s entirely his fault.”

“The Nest isn’t _normal._ ”

“It is for us,” Andrew chastised. As their mantra showed, Neil was at times blind to his reality. It was one of the few times Andrew found him annoying beyond word. “He’s had years to learn. If he hasn’t, that isn’t my problem. And, frankly, he’s as fun as a wet blanket. I won’t help the boring.”

“What could I give you?”

A laugh. Andrew was startled to find it had come from his own throat, and that the amusement was genuine. That was a first in a long, long time.

“Mr. Josten,” Neil blinked - the last name worked as surely as any _listen well_ \- and Andrew crowded into his space, a goalkeeper’s bulk against a backliner’s lean muscle, “you’ve offered everything you have. You have nothing left.”

“I’ve only given you my word,” he’d replied, stiff.

Andrew tapped two fingers against Neil’s temple. Impressively, the man didn’t flinch; he frowned, his hand twitching up to swat Andrew’s hand away.

An action made too late as Andrew had dropped his hand to Neil’s shoulder, the warmth from the other’s skin seeping through thin cotton and into a calloused palm.

“Baby,” Andrew cooed, “your word’s as good as your thought, and in the Nest, your mind’s all you have. Are you saying that’s not good enough? You’d hate if I learned you short-cut me.”

Neil’s lips thinned. As the silence stretched too long to be broken by a protest, Andrew gave his shoulder a squeeze and backed off.

“We’ll talk again.” He waved a hand in farewell as he turned. He shut down the path his thoughts wanted to take (they always ran off-course around Neil Josten), and gave the words he’d given others attempting to barter for their King-loving friends. “But not about Jean Moreau. Good day, Mr. Josten.”

A whistle was all it took for Troy to break from his look-out spot and step in line. 

Neil did not follow. It was just as well. They weren’t even supposed to have met -- Neil had made it sound urgent with a letter in Andrew’s locker, and Andrew had carved out a situation for them to talk privately within the week. That wasn’t protocol in their little agreement, and Neil would do well to remember that.

_And yet._

(There was always an _and yet_ with Neil Josten. It was exhausting.)

Not three days after that discussion, Neil had raced to Andrew and Troy’s room an hour after lights out. 

“Help me,” he’d begged through grit teeth, his pride wounded and bleeding and raw and real.

Andrew hadn’t asked specifics, only dug out longer pants and easy to slip on sneakers. Troy had mumbled dejectedly into his pillow about only having three hours left to sleep even as he struggled to rise. When Andrew told him to stay in the room and not let anyone know where Andrew had gone, he’d collapsed back into his bed with a happy sigh.

(Troy was an odd bird. He was lucky he’d shown up after Andrew had decided Riko was no longer to his taste.)

If Andrew were _honest_ , which he enjoyed but rarely was able to be, he didn’t think to ask Neil specifics until they were outside his dorm door. 

He regretted this in the same manner he regretted most things about Neil Josten. That was: thoroughly.

“They were just talking about his upcoming graduation, about how he should talk with recruiters. About what team would accept who. Riko and Kevin, I mean. They were the ones talking.

“Jean said he was tired, said he’d take a shower and then go to bed.” 

Though much smaller, Neil had Jean propped against his shoulder in the dorm’s bathroom, the latter unresponsive to the former’s presence. The scene struck a discord with its setting, the brightly lit and methodically clean room with light glaring off white tile and white porcelain and white countertops jarring badly against a pale-faced Frenchman and a desperate runaway. Taken together, it did not fit in the Nest. 

“He was taking too long. I picked the lock when he wouldn’t respond to my knocking. I had to shower, too, I mean, I needed-- _he always responds._ I thought he was brooding after their visit. I had no idea he’d swallowed half our sleeping pills.”

Andrew took in the scene, Jean silent and Neil panicked and the open medication bottle on the countertop, and backed up a step.

“I won’t help a dying man--” 

“-- Fuck you,” Neil snarled, sharp enough to raise Andrew’s eyebrows. “Jean’s my family. He’s a part of me. If you’re going to help me, I only ask you help him, too.”

The word _please_ hung between them, because even here, Neil remembered Andrew didn’t like the word.

That, strangely, grated.

“He needs a doctor,” Andrew allowed. “A trip to the hospital. I can’t pump his stomach.”

“Pump his stomach?” Neil repeated, and looked at Jean’s stomach as if he had no idea where an overdose of pills would go.

He’d never dealt with people like this, Andrew realized. He’d never dealt with caring about someone always walking one step from death. That naivety was also strangely grating.

“Prop him up over the toilet.”

Neil didn’t question his sudden change of heart. He struggled only to do as asked.

It was someone else who bent Andrew’s knee, who had him reach out to help Neil move his larger roommate. It went without saying Jean Moreau could not be admitted to the hospital: it would raise too many questions and too many flags, not to mention an investigation into the state of Jean’s person that Edgar Alan would not enjoy. Doubtful though it was that anything would come of scrutiny and likely though it was the incident would be covered up within a week, Riko would not stand for it so close to his graduation. Hell, Kevin would not stand for it so close to his graduation. The team recruiters would _certainly_ not take well to it.

Jean choked when Andrew shoved his fingers down his throat. He rose to consciousness enough to moan and roll glassy eyes in Neil’s direction, but faded back to sleep within the next breath. 

Neil flew into a miniature conniption, his face stony and words a tirade of admonishing French, mouth pressed to Jean’s ear and fingers tight in the back of his shirt. Andrew gave him tasks to do ( _get water, hold his shoulders back, get a towel_ ) to get him moving, which worked relatively well as Neil scrambled to do each and every one with focus typically reserved for the court.

Two bowlfuls of white speckled flushes later when clear fluid was all Jean threw up, Andrew sat back and shook out his saliva covered hand. Neil continued to fret over his roommate, folding a thick towel to lower Jean’s head carefully so if he did wake, it would not be with a crick in the neck. Neil’s face was curiously resigned, though the corners of his mouth looked to be drawn tight in the right light. 

That wouldn’t do.

“Not a single bite,” Andrew said, observing his unmarked palm approvingly. “He’s well trai--”

“ _Finish that sentence and I’ll rip out your tongue_ ,” Neil cursed him in French.

He spoke with a dialect that matched Jean’s, though he probably didn’t realize it.

(He also gave Andrew the first threat Andrew had given him. He probably didn’t realize it.)

To keep Neil’s attention on him, Andrew stood, shrugged, turned on the tap to wash his hands, and kept talking.

“Watch out for liver damage in the next few days. Keep him hydrated. I’d say keep him off the court, but that’s beyond anyone’s control. Really, either he’ll make it or he won’t. That’s usually how these attempts go.”

“No shit.”

With Jean quiet but breathing, Neil quietly collected and put himself back together. He seemed willing to take Andrew’s word, which was as it should be. He seemed equally willing to accept Andrew didn’t know _everything_ , which out of those Andrew had come to call his own, was a trait uniquely Neil.

“Have you done this before?”

Andrew looked up and over. Neil stared back, Jean still and silent under the hand Neil petted through his sweat-slicked hair. It looked awkward with Neil, as if he was doing something he remembered another doing for him but couldn’t quite manage the replication. Or, more likely for Neil Josten: it was something he knew people did, and was mirroring it as well as he could without ever having experienced it himself.

Either way, it looked pathetic.

Andrew hated him. A lot. Of the time they spent together squashed onto a hundred point scale, he would rate his hate at ninety-eight.

“No,” Andrew admitted. “Not for someone else.”

Neil’s eyes fell to Andrew’s bare arms. 

Andrew gave him a grin, all teeth and all threat. He wished for a knife, sure, if only to make a point. “I had to practice on something.”

“I don’t need to know,” Neil cut in, voice a borderline admonishment for Andrew’s aggression. It wasn’t what was expected. It raised Andrew’s eyebrows, an _are you trying to play me_ expression stealing over his face. “Thank you, Andrew. I owe you.”

Andrew blinked.

He cocked his head.

He dropped the smile. 

“Don’t tell Moreau who dragged him back to his hell,” he said, “and I’ll consider us even.”  


. . .

  
Riko never finds out about Jean’s lapse in judgement and brush with death.

The reason he approaches and propositions Andrew for a joint _discipline_ session with Neil is because soon, the Raven King will leave the Nest, and he knows professional teams won’t be nearly as lenient with their players’ health.

Andrew hasn’t put a blade to his own skin in years, but that doesn’t mean much when he puts one to Neil’s.  


. . .

  
Troy Maeda was labeled number five, a dealer pulled from Hawaii’s colorful shoreline at the ripe old age of seventeen. He was to be Andrew’s permanent partner after semesters upon semesters of rotating, fresh-and-fearful pairs. Though he was one year too young for university, Tetsuji had him shadow the Ravens and take schooling online. He did not take to the Raven’s Nest well. Andrew was meant to ease his anxieties through any means necessary.

Riko never found a seven, eight or nine. It was just as well.

Andrew would trace Kevin’s in the dark of a forgotten corner with his finger, or Neil’s with his eyes, but he never paid the six on his cheek attention, and Riko’s one even less. 

Oh. Yes. 

Kevin.  


. . .

  
What Andrew hears is this:

“I’m graduating soon,” Kevin says, disbelieving to both their ears. 

He sits on a cardboard box full of hot-off-the-assembly-line Exy balls in the Nest’s storage room, one of Andrew’s hands threading through his hair and the other on the junction of neck and shoulder. He’s tipsy, maybe, or just confused about life as it was. He hadn’t wanted Andrew to kiss or blow or fuck him: he wanted comfort without calling it that, he wanted someone to look and touch and not demand him to be anyone but Kevin Day. It was a tall order for most, including himself; it had taken him well over a year and a half to accept both the quiet and frantic meetings that Andrew offered. His eyes ask, _Is this all I have?_

He’s very dramatic. 

Andrew obliges him all the same.

“Congratulations.” Andrew bends and blows a breath into his ear just to see him grimace and straighten, his chest out and disdain petty. “Try not to get in anyone’s way.” 

“Keep the order,” Kevin replies, dry in a way he’d learned from Jean, Neil, or both.

When Andrew imagines the Nest after Kevin and Riko leave, he imagines--

“Andrew?”

Kevin shoves Andrew back. Andrew lets him, if only because this is the first time someone had interrupted them, and while he knows why they had, Kevin does not.

When Andrew looks, Francis is a nervous wall of a twenty-one year old, his face pinched and eyes glued to Kevin Day. He refuses to speak in front of this interloper, which Andrew would commend him for on any other day.

This Day, he’d like to see alive.

“Time?” Andrew asks Francis. Kevin shoots him a questioning look, but wisely keeps quiet.

After a pause, Francis answers. “Four-thirty.”

“Perfect. Everything’s in place.” Francis fidgets. Andrew rolls his shoulders, his neck, and enjoys the pop. “Sorry, babe. We’ll have to meet again later. Maybe when you’re sober.”

That’s a joke. No laugh follows it.

He doesn’t stop Andrew from leaving, or ask what Andrew and his oldest ex-partner had planned, which isn’t something he would have done two years previous. Andrew takes it at face value, and tucks away the rare quiet meeting they had as _just this once, it wasn’t meant to last._  


. . .

  
This is what Andrew knows:

He is the last defense. If he lets this shot go, the game will be lost.  


. . .

  
"Evermore is your reality. You are a Raven. You are here."

It is a week before the fifth years’ graduation.

"Your father is dead. Your mother is dead. Riko is not your master. The Moriyamas do not own you. They are your jailers. In twenty-nine days, the King will graduate."

Neil repeats without prompting. 

“Good.”

Neil looks as if this reality is as it had always been. The four on his cheek is nothing he seems to notice. When Riko had learned he hated his reflection, he had made Neil look into a mirror while he decorated Neil’s skin with a knife’s sharp end. The unique brand of Moriyama therapy had worked, in the sense that Neil now looked to mirrors with no expression at all.

A week, and Riko would be gone.

Tentatively, Andrew feels it: anticipation. Giddiness. An elation, the likes of which felt akin to balancing at a great height.

“Wait,” Neil bids, and Andrew does, though he really has places to be.

A green-topped cigarette packet is fished from a pocket and offered in Andrew’s direction. 

On his silence, Neil clarifies, “I couldn’t sneak in a lighter because of the metal,” as if that was the question Andrew wanted to ask.

“You want me to ruin my lungs?” He returns with no heat. It’s the complaint Kevin had raised when Andrew first arrived at the Nest, because of course when he’d said _your world will change_ he hadn’t mentioned that Andrew would have to quit _smoking_. Apparently, Kevin had thought _that_ might have been a deal breaker.

(Maybe it would’ve been if Andrew knew. It had certainly been more unexpected than Riko’s arrogant cruelty.)

Neil shrugs, unconcerned. 

“You mentioned that you used to smoke.” He had not done any such thing. Not out loud, not in one easy to understand place. “Do you or don’t you? I’ll throw them out if you don’t.”

The lighter Andrew keeps in his room had for its eight months of use heated one fire iron, sterilized three needles, and (after a near-loss against the Trojans because of their sub strikers’ incompetence) burned ugly blotches into two Ravens’ upper arms. It was still fairly full, and definitely contained enough oil for a pack of cigarettes.

Andrew holds Neil’s gaze for a silent handful of seconds before Neil once more shrugs and made to toss the pack toward the garbage.

Snapping a hand out to catch it mid-air, Andrew keeps his eyes on Neil. He doesn’t feel a smile spread across his face, which is the second surprise of the meeting.

Neil looks like somewhere under his carefully blank mask, he’s preening.

Andrew sneers, “Don’t be wasteful,” and makes his way out without another word.  


. . .

  
The cigarette pack contains a note with Aaron’s address, a _dorm number might have changed_ scribbled in the corner, and a fox paw print doodled on the back.

It’s ugly.

It’s stupid.

It brings his elation down just a notch. He teeters on the edge of a crumbling tower. He wants to fall, he wants to jump, he does not want to fly, he does not want his brother’s address and Neil’s resistance.

Andrew takes a good, long look at the crinkled paper, slips it back into the pack, lights the cardboard corner, and lets it burn.  


. . .

  
This is what Andrew knows:

At birth, Riko Moriyama had been dealt a bad hand. His only crime was to be born second; in punishment, his father consigned him to a life of little more than an Exy-playing monkey, ignored beyond his ability to pull in money and preserve a front for the Moriyama’s dealings. Raised to be the best in one thing and one thing only by an obsessive uncle, Riko had broken long before he put a racquet to Kevin’s left hand.

Time had not worked in his favor. The months leading to graduation, yes: he’d become much happier after accepting an offer for a professional team his uncle endorsed, for though his father was dead and would never see his son no matter his accomplishments, his uncle’s pride was a rare and valuable thing. 

Andrew knew Riko’s good mood from the accumulation of errors, from oversights on his Perfect Court’s performance, from Moreau’s stumble going unnoticed, from even - the horror! - the occasional night off from practice. Andrew knew Riko’s cause for a good mood from simple observation: Riko was not shy to tell what team he was slated to join, though he attempted a day of mystery because it made Kevin beg to be told.

Andrew knew Kevin’s team was well regarded and on the opposite side of the country from Riko’s. That had not been intentional. That in fact worried Kevin, as _Riko’s acting like his normal self, finally,_ and _we should try to be on the same team. It’s only right._

When Kevin said _we_ , he meant Andrew, too. He meant Andrew, and Jean, and Neil, and Troy.

 _There has to be something about the Olympics to look forward to,_ Andrew had replied, and meant it. To Kevin’s scowl, he’d added, _The King will slide back to his normal self after graduation._

Kevin denied it. To him, to his fearful and anxious and desperate belief that Riko would never again harm him as badly as he had, the fifteen year old Riko he had trusted like a brother still existed. It was pitiable, if only Andrew held any pity.

Kevin waits for when the Riko he knew would return.

Neil waits for Riko to be gone.

Jean waits for his time to be over.

Andrew is finished with waiting.  


. . .

  
This is what happens:

Riko Moriyama walks from the stage of his college graduation to the back of a police car. 

For the Perfect Court, their chances to be under the sky belonged to game days and PR stunts. For Andrew Day, his chance to contact the police after finding a teammate _unconscious, bruised and bleeding in Riko’s dorm room_ is a two hour window as Riko, Kevin and Jean sat for Edgar Alan’s graduation speech and Tetsuji Moriyama watched from the faculty’s seating. For Andrew Day, the ideal time to ruin the Raven’s number one was at the height of his happiness and the beginning of his success.

The news breaks too quickly for the Moriyamas to clamp down on it, as police cars fight through swarms of celebrating parents and students.

Three days after Riko is led away in cuffs, Francis Brendelson wakes in the emergency ward of his hospital and confesses in near-tears to journalists and one very concerned detective that this hadn’t been the first time, that the scars along his arms weren’t from accidents on the court. He points the finger at Riko Moriyama for each and every bruise, burn and gash. Shelby Meggers recounts drug-fogged nights, money being passed to Riko’s hand, and waking with disgust, shame and pain. Trayvon Arellano admits similar experiences. Jake Lastar, too. Others, and others, and others.

(The only ones left untouched, it seemed to the public, was Riko’s Perfect Court. _What a coincidence._ ) 

That said, it isn’t hard for the Moriyama family to discover who made the first call. That’s fine. That’s as Andrew intended.

They don’t give him much of a choice. That’s fine. That’s as Andrew intended.

Tetsuji Moriyama wants him dead. Ichirou Moriyama, on speaker phone from two states over, asks, “Why not?”

 _Why not,_ Andrew privately agreed.

But Tetsuji Moriyama’s bodyguards were not what they used to be, or they were used to certain wards coming in and out of the Master’s office, as Nathaniel Wesninski knocked, entered, and, calm and collected as any Moriyama, made a fine case for _why not._

That is not as Andrew intended.

“Riko was a powder keg,” Nathaniel argues. “Better he was taken out now than when your money was in his pocket. Andrew Day saw a loose end, and cut it.”

This is not as intended at all.

“Eighty percent of our salary,” Nathaniel bargains.

Andrew would like to protest, but he is falling. He has jumped. What comes after is out of his control, and this is the after.

Tetsuji is cold, is practical, is distant. He watches, as he always had. If he cares for his youngest nephew’s fate, he will not say in front of the new head of his family.

Ichirou Moriyama accepts Nathaniel’s deal.

Andrew Day walks out of the office unscathed and, in all the ways that matter, untethered.  


. . .

  
What follows is not something Andrew knows.

It’s too costly to shut up half of the Raven’s players about Riko’s abuse. The man goes to trial with a family lawyer by his side. The man is found, a week after being detained, dead in his holding cell, hung from his window by his bedsheets. 

The news takes the Exy world by storm. Edgar Alan’s team is put under official investigation, and Tetsuji Moriyama finds himself under high pressure from the shocked administration to retire early. It went without saying he wanted nothing to do with his nephew’s Perfect Court -- he was too experienced and self-aware to make the mistakes Riko had, but that didn’t stop him from changing his home’s locks from anything his adopted wards had a key to.

Troy has a family in Hawaii to return to. Jean and Neil, lacking that, pack to move with Kevin to his new two-bedroom apartment in Georgia.

“You’re coming with,” Neil tells him. “Or you’re going to see your brother. Make up your mind.”

Andrew doesn’t say anything to that - it isn’t something he knows, or understands, or can fathom -, but on the day Kevin arrives in a big red SUV to pick up Jean and Neil, Andrew has his bags ready, too. 

Kevin is not taking Riko’s passing well, Andrew sees. He looks in need of a drink. He looks ready to fall apart. He has been cracked down the middle for a long time. Returning to the Nest had stalled his healing for too long. 

Eventually, he will be fine. Andrew intended that.

Jean in the front seat is silent, his eyes forward and mouth tight. Behind him, Neil has a smile as he watches the scenery pass.

It rubs Andrew wrong for a breath before the feeling, like every other feeling after the call to the police, slides away. As they drive south, the feeling returns. 

His brother’s address. A place to run to. Neil’s timing on interrupting his sentencing. It’s all very convenient.

“You knew,” he accuses, feeling hollow and empty and, despite that, curious.

In the front of the car, Kevin’s eyes flick to the rearview mirror, darting between his backseat passengers. Jean tilts his head to look from the corner of his eye, the corners of his mouth tightening even further.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Neil replies. “Watch yourself, Andrew. I know you’re bad at self-awareness, but you should give it a try. I swear it’s not that painful.” 

Neil Josten is the _last_ person to be making that speech.

Andrew can’t help himself: the sentiment that he would need watching is so startling, so funny, so irrelevant and ridiculous, his mouth curves upward. 

Neil catches it and matches him. 

It feels like what Andrew never had: hope.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! visit me at [unkingly](http://unkingly.tumblr.com/) for more tfc flavored things. 
> 
> kandreil would be in the future (during a long and painful recovery process for the Raven boys) but this set-up took so much out of me, I needed to just get it out there. hope you guys enjoyed this different twist! x:


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